I very much enjoyed the penultimate stage of the Giro d’Italia this year, as Simon Yates carried out one of the great cycle-racing burglaries of recent years on the very climb where he had a Giro title snatched out of his grasp in 2018.
There were many reasons to love it – there was Drama! Redemption! Gravel! – but the best of it was the stand-off between Isaac del Toro and Richard Carapaz. I wouldn’t want to diminish the excellent ambush Yates and Wout van Aert sprang, but there was a long section of the race where Del Toro and Carapaz performed a cycling version of Waiting for Godot:
